
3522 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

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Hollinger Corp. 
pH 8.5 



PS 3523 
.167 T9 
1920 
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Copyright, 1920, by 
ROBERT CASPAR LINTNER 

REPUBLICAN PRESS, 
Council Grove, Kansas 



©CU601489 



NOV -5 /920 



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f^T^ THOSE WHO JOY 
fO in the coming of the 
^r twilight and revel in 
the wonder of the evening 
silences and the later appear- 
ing of the evening star, and who 
await in joy-filled service the 
meeting with the Pilot. 



PREFACE 

Two years ago this interpretation of 
Crossing the Bar was written, before the 
author went overseas in the United States 
Army. Now after a complete revision it 
16 offered in booklet form to the public 
May it come into the hands of many 
of those who love the coming of evening 
with its sunset glory and the marvel of the 
nightly unveiling of God's stars. There is 
no other time when the wonder of heaven 
seems to creep more tangibly into the 
silence of our own souls, and when the 
heart seems more readily to fall in tune 
with the vast symphony of God-His plan 
May He seem nearer as you read. And 
may you have the presence of the Pilot not 
shrouded in dim draperies of twilight,' un- 
recognized, but known and beloved in 
clear recognition and regnant within you 
m the glory of your own soul. 

Robert Caspar Lintner. 
Baldwin, Kansas, 
February, 1920. 



FOREWORD 



God has given to some men moments 
of vision in which they have looked to- 
ward the shore-line of heaven's Eternal 
Homeland and have mounted in the 
ecstacy of heavenly song. 

These men, whatever may have been 
the age in which they lived and saw and 
sang, are prophets, divinely inspired to 
breathe God's messages to His children 
of earth, in words which they may un- 
derstand and cherish and by which their 
souls may be fed and pointed heavenward- 
Such a prophet was Alfred Tennyson, 
great poet prophet of the nineteenth cen- 
tury in England. 

Such a song of divinely inspired hope 
and transcendent faith in eternal love 
and providence was Crossing the Bar, 
one of the sublimest poems which God 
ever gave into the mind of any poet of 
the English language. 



What imagery, what compression of 
ideas pregnant with thought which chal- 
lenges the pondering of thoughtful 
minds ! 

It is the sea-going song of a great soul 
who has heard the sounding of the bell 
for Eternity's sailing and whose heart 
wells up in boundless faith in his Pilot, 
whom, having not seen, he yet loves with 
a boundless love and trusts with a faith 
quite as unbounded as the ocean upon 
which he is soon to sail, under His guid- 
ance. 

Let us follow for a time the suggestio- 
of his thought and revel in the beauty of 
his imagery. And perhaps upon us, too, 
may come some measure of the hope, the 
love, the unswerving faith, which lived 
and soared within the heart of Alfred 
Tennyson as he wrote Crossing the Bar. 



CROSSING THE BAR 

By Alfred Tennyson 
I 

JSunset and evening star, 

And one clear call for me! 
And may there be no moaning of the bar, 

When I put out to sea, 

But such a tide as moving seems asleep, 

Too full for sound and foam, 
When that Which drew from out the boundess deep 

Turns again home. 

Twilight and evening bell, 

And after that the dark! 
And may there be no sadness of farewell, 

When I embark; 

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place 

The flood may bear me far, 
I hope to see my Pilot face to face 

When I have cross *d the bar. 



"TWILIGHT AND EVENING BELL" 




"Sunset and evening star" 

UNSET! The glory hour, when a 
tired world rests in the wonder- 
ful loveliness of evening skies 
flushed and radiant with all the myriad 
glories which Nature lavishes upon a de- 
parting day! Sunrise, be it ever so won- 
derful, can never soothe and gladden the 
heart as does the finer hour when the 
western sky is aflame with all the inef- 
fable splendor of the sunset. Even as the 
writer of Ecclesiastes once declared that 
the day of one's death is better than the 
day of one's birth, so is the hour of the 
day's dying fraught with glory which 
speaks to the tired heart a message of re- 
, ward and glad fruition, whereas the radi- 
ance of dawn had given but hope and 
cheer. 



11 



The being who can look with dispas- 
sionate calm upon the glory of a sunset is 
unspeakably poor in ability to appreciate 
the best and loveliest things of earth. 
Shakespeare held that the one who has 
not music in his soul is fit only for the un- 
worthy things of life. Music appeals to 
those refinements of soul which appreciate 
and love and take to themselves the har- 
monies, the pulsing rhythms and the 
sweet melodies of sound. Those refined 
qualties of soul do but translate the har- 
monies, the rhythms, the cadences of 
sound and song into harmonies, rhythms 
and melodies which are already at home 
in the appreciative heart that so hears and 
understands and assimilates and grows. 
He who truly appreciates the beauties of 
the sunset will grow in asthetic sense, in 
ability to see and comprehend and love the 
grandest things of Nature. He who has 
not these quatities of appreciation should 
lose no time in acquiring them as wholly 
as he may. For Shakespeare might have 
added as truly that he who cannot sense 
the loveliness of a sunset is fit for un- 
blinking entrance into any crime. 
For who, that might not sense the 



12 



harmonies in man's efforts at music, 
should not be able to sense the presence 
of perfect harmonies in Nature's fault- 
less Mendings of sunset tints? Or who, 
that might not feel the rhythm of the 
song of even a Jenny Lind, should not be 
conscious of the delicate and pervasive 
shadings of colors in the sunset? Or what 
one, who might fail utterly in appreciation 
of the melody in a lullaby of one of the 
old masters, might not stand speechless in 
wonder in the presence of the loveli- 
ness of the evening lullaby with which Na- 
ture soothes to rest her tired children of 
forest and sea and prairie stretch? 

Have you seen films of finest azure 
and ribbons of downy white drift across 
the crimson glow at the heart of the sun- 
set? And have you seen the slow and si- 
lent blending of orange with deep rose 
and the change of saffron into gentian, or 
of turquoise into sapphire ? Perchance you 
have seen opalescent cloud fringes glow 
into ruby which deepened to light ame- 
thyst. Have you not wondered then at the 
deft and inexplicable skill of the One who 
limns the varying shades of the evening 
sunset? And have you not wondered how 



13 



any human heart couid remain unmoved 
before the wonder shown in it all? Truly 
a man with such a heart, though he were 
a Croesus of earth, would be a Lazarus in 
his lack of the sublimest qualities of spir- 
itual appreciations. 

In the midst of such inspiring loveli 
ness, picture a great poet soul. Imagine 
the far-seeing eye of his spiritual discern- 
ment gazing intently out across the vast, 
silent, unknown ocean which stretches 
out and away toward the curtain of the 
sunset, beyond which he fain would see 
the shores of the great Homeland. Fancy 
his heart throbbing with the holiest emo- 
tions of the human soul, unscarred by the 
bitter lacerations of blind doubt or of fear. 
Perceive that in his innermost conscious- 
ness is an undaunted purpose to press out 
and away to the Unseen Land which lies 
beyond the sunset seas, there to search out 
peace and sustaining joy in the Land of 
the Eternal Dawn, where are no grief nor 
pain nor dying. Behold his clear prophet 
eyes rapt in their vision of eternal day and 
its endless rapture, until the tears of joy 
dim his sight and a glad song stirs within 
his heart, which throbs in exultant glad- 



14 



ness and in compelling desire to set that 
song to the music of words which shall 
never die. Let us call that prophet Ten- 
nyson, and his glad song Crossing the 
Bar. 

''Sunset and evening star". 

And evening star! A star of hope- 
that is beyond and above the sunset A 
star it is, which, like the bright Star of 
Bethlehem at the first glad Christmas- 
tide, shines radiantly in a cheery message 
of eternal peace among men of good will, 
through the matchless grace of Jesus 
the Christ. 

What a message of cheer is there in 
the faint glimmering of that first star 
which dots the blue of the evening sky! 
The sunset glow has faded, and the deep 
blue of the western sky shows scarcely a 
trace of its late glory. Here and there 
a fleecy bit of cloud drifts across or above 
the portion of the sky where before had 
been the wonder of the sunset And now, 
faint at first, and then whitening slowly 
into a definite point of light, the star of 
evening seems to step forth from the 
azure portals of heaven and beckon to un- 



15 



seen myriads of tiny followers who are 
soon to appear in lesser beauty. 

It is as though the spirits of the 
Great World of the Eternally Living had 
flocked earthward to guard their dear 
ones of earth during the night silences, 
and one had outflown the others and had 
been the first to part the tapestries of 
heaven. 

It is as though the first bud of the 
springtime had slipped out through the 
matted leaves and into the sunlight, and 
then, assured of the welcome of air and 
sun, had nodded its welcoming encourage- 
ment to the timid troop of blossoms-to-be, 
which still lingered in slumber or hid halt 
.shyly among the grass and leaves. 

It is as though the first tone, faint 
almost to inaudibility, had sounded — nay, 
drifted — out from the lute or oboe of some 
great hidden orchestra. And then, as here 
and yonder a faint glimmer of light dis- 
closes the appearing of another and yet 
another star, it is as though another and 
still another voice of the great hidden or- 
chestra — here the sweet, plaintive modu- 
lations of a muted violin, and there the 
fuller resonance of a wood-wind — had 



16 



joined in the softly swelling volume of 
liarmony which was soon to become the 
great throbbing symphony of night. 

Who has not stood speechless and with 
bared soul before the indescribable beauty 
and majesty of the nightly unfolding of 
the star world? How finite is man in his 
little corner of a mighty universe, as he 
ilooks out upon an unexplored galaxy of 
flaming suns and luminous planets which 
dot the stellar spaces beyond our moon, 
,and realizes, as a thinking man must real- 
ize, how infinitely beyond his present ken 
lis the illimitable power of the Eternal 
Creator, in whose hands the farthest 
suns and their unseen followers are as 
playthings in the giant clockwork of God's 
infinity! What denizens of unknown 
iworlds may be looking upon this great 
nightly wonder and offering their heart 
paeans of silent gratitude and awe and 
worship to the same God whom we wor- 
ship? We cannot sense the majesty and 
the power of the Creator, in whose hands 
the evening star is but a common jewel. 
The evening star symbolizes hope, 
1 peace, joy, love. It symbolizes hope be- 
| cause it bears bright promise of a night 

17 



which shall be alight with heaven's guard-* 
ians, and of a new day which shall come 
in a glory of dawning akin to the sunset 
which has faded. The star symbolizes 
peace because it ushers in the silence of a 
tranquil night, wherein the weary of earth 
may lie down to rest, ere the coming of 
the toil of another day. The star symbol- 
izes joy, because heaven is glad in the- 
nightly ministry of light in darkness, and 
because the people of earth have gratitude 
for the good of the day and the repose of 
the night, and are glad for the beauty of 
the silent, guarding stars. The star of 
evening symbolizes love, because the heart 
of the Eternal Father is athrob with love 
for his children of earth, and He has set 
His ministering angels to guard them dur- 
ing the night. 

Do we wonder that the poet heart 
of Tennyson, as he felt the brooding calm 
of the evening silences, the glory of the 
sunset's spell and the silent grandeur of 
the later appearing of the evening star, 
was attuned to the melodies of heavenly 
song? 

Such a heart, so moved, must see and 



18 



feel and speak in terms of living music. 

"And one clear call for me!" 

The call of heaven. The summons of 
eternal song and to the living glory of 
eternal light. The day is closing. Life, 
yearned for, sought after, at once the 
scene of hopes and fears and triumphs and 
bereavements, is fast coming to its hour 
of closing. In one brief hour the delights 
and the tears of earth will be gone for- 
ever for that heart. For the call has come. 
Mortal cannot but heed. Heaven has sum- 
moned and earth must yield its flower to 
blossom, forever unplucked, in the unfad- 
ing gardens of God's Glory Land, where 
is no scourage of sun by day nor of frost 
by night. There eternal joy is, for there 
the immortal soul, wrested from its clay 
mould, is set to blossom at its full, in the 
living sunlight of God's eternal presence.- 

And the call is 



for me!" 



No one else may hear the ringing clear- 
ness of the call at this time. Others about 
may not not know its sound. Their sum- 



19 



nions may come in the noon-time, in the 
morning's break or in the midnight 
watches of a coming to-morrow. But just 
now it is the hour of evening and one soul, 
alone with his God and with the silence of 
the eventide, has heard the summons of 
heaven. 

The summons is individual and so must 
be the response. No one else may follow 
its leading at this time into the light o% 
the eternal day. Earthly friends, whet 
would joy in the giving of their lives ancf 
their all for the one to whom the summon* 
has come, must stand apart and watch 
while the one who is called prepares for 
his voyage. That one, attended only byi 
his Pilot, must put out from shore anc 
enter upon that voyage from which hi; 
little craft will never return. 

His brave spirit prays, even as he con- 
templates his sailing : 

"And may there be no moaning of the bar, 
When I put out to sea, 

But such a tide as moving seems asleep, 

Too full for sound and foam, 
When that which drew from out the boundless deep 

Turns again home." 

It is to be a voyage over unknown, un| 
20 



fathomed seas. Out beyond the harbor 
bar stretch the billowing waves of un- 
charted waters. Happy is the one whose 
bark on such seas may have the guidance 
of the Pilot of Unknown Seas. His calm 
word can still the fury of the lashing 
tempests, even as His voice quieted the 
angry waves on the Sea of Galilee. And 
His presence can make glad and com- 
panionable the dark hours wherein the 
soul sets sail across the bar. What a 
Friend is this Pilot of earth-weary, 
tempest-driven souls, who cheers and 
guides and counsels as the little craft, with 
His hands at the wheel, slips out and 
away over the nearer waters! 
But what means this singer who prays 



there be no moaning of the bar"? 



It is the moaning of waves which lash 
in driving breakers over the harbor bar. 
It is the low tide. Beneath those angry 
heaps of foaming wave lie the sharp pin- 
nacles and the rounded boulders upon the 
concealed masses of which the pilgrim 
ship may be driven to wreck. There is no 
beacon light to warn the voyager, nor is 
tiere the tempest-muffled clanging of a 



21 



bell which may warn away with its jangled 
tones the one who drives thither over a 
merciless sea. Only the moaning of the 
bar sounds as Nature's warning to beware 
and steer aside. But the voyager may be 
powerless, in the rush of the tempest, to 
heed even that warning. 

It is not strange that a soul should 
pray that in his hour of sailing there may 



be no moaning of the bar' 



The anxious soul prays that there may 
be, rather, 

" such a tide as moving seems asleep, 

Too full for sound and foam, 
"When that which drew from out the boundless deep 

Turns again home." 

Such a tide as moving seems asleep! 
How beautifully expressive is that of calm 
mightiness, of unfathomed depth, of 
power that vaunts not itself in needless 
show nor in strident tumult. "Still water 
runs deep" is but the proverbmonger's 
way of saying that the deep, the truly 
great and noble and profoundly wise are 
silent about themselves. It is the shallow 
stream which is fretted into ripples by 



22 



every little pebble in its bed. It is the little 
man of shallow mind who is perturbed in- 
to turmoil by every adversity, every ob- 
stacle, every dissenting or faithless voice. 
The ocean minds not pebbles. They are 
broken and smoothed and polished by it in 
its onrush. The great man is not hindered 
or harmed by the slight obstacles which 
are themselves broken and smoothed b\ 
his unheeding progress over them. To the 
man of really great mind the trifling ob- 
stacles to his thought and efforts are as 
rock to be crushed and used to macadam 
the highway over which he strides to his 
goal. 

Too full for sound and foam ! The rocks 
lie deep beneath the calm surface of the 
deep waters. There is no sound of tem- 
pest, of waves beating, beating, beating 
upon the rocks. There is no foam of crest 
crushed against crest. All is silent, un- 
ruffled, unending sea. 

It is as a man whose heart is crushed 
heneath the weight of grief or whose mind 
is conscious only of the greatness of his 
thought and recks not of the passing dis- 
tractions of the moment. Such a mind, 
conscious of its own power and busy with 



23 



its own absorbing interests, would be in- 
deed 

"Too full for sound and foam". 

But where is the secret of this depth, 
of this tranquillity, of thought and pur- 
pose and action which are 

"Too full for sound and foam"? 

We read the secret here : 

"When that which drew from out the boundless cteep' 
Turns again home." 

From out the vast bosom of the great 
deep the waters have drifted, drifted; 
drifted shoreward, even as they seemed 
to sleep, and now that they have lapped 
for a time upon the low stretches of the 
shore, they are again putting out to sea — 
turning again home — home — to the vast 
stretches of water which extend out and 
out and away until they play gently upon 
the shores of the Better Land and lap in 
strains of celestial music upon the golden 
strands where the angel spirits are wont 
to tread. 

The boundless deep! Boundless, save 
where it compasses the little island of Now 



24 



and meets again the endless shores of 
Eternity. The boundless deep ! How sug- 
gestive these words are of the vastness of 
the waters over which plies the frail little 
bark of the soul! What opportunity is 
there, in all that vastness, for finding the 
Better Shore? How infinite in number 
are the chances for steering the course 
wrongly ! 

Oh, for the hand of the Pilot who has 
sailed the deep before and has knowledge 
of the way to the Better Land! With His 
hand upon the wheel there can be no dis- 
aster. No night is too dark for the keen- 
ness of His vision. He knows the perils, 
the hidden reefs, the rocks which lie con- 
cealed and the paths where the glaciers 
drift beneath the surface of the waters. 
Without Him no voyager can steer safely 
into the Port of the Homeland. 

For the voyager, as well as the tide, is 
returning home. He, too, has drawn from 
out the boundless deep, the limitless ex- 
panses of the Eternity of the yesterdays, 
which merges and is at one with the 
Eternity of to-day and of the unnum- 
bered to-morrows. 

Eternity ! Home — eternal home — of the? 



25 



immortal soul, which is the everliving 
Creator's highest handicraft! Eternity! 
From the time that God first was, it has 
been, and so long as God shall live, so long 
will Eternity be, in unending cycles of re- 
curring aeons. 

The boundless deep ! How better could 
we describe the Land of unending, eter- 
nally begun To-day ? The boundless deep ! 
Boundless it is in its never-ending reaches. 
Deep it is, beyond the fathoming power 
of men or of angels. Only the mind of God 
the omnipotent Creator can know its ex- 
pan?e and fathom its depth. 

Xow the weary traveller of earth 

"Turns again home." 

Yet with what reluctant steps ! Friends 
will come to the water's brink and will 
wave their farewells as the little bark slips 
slowly away into the horizon. But there 
will be tears, and hearts will ache in the 
bitterness of grief. There may be hope of 
a meeting again on the other shore. But 
the way is long and unknown, and tem- 
pests may drive the little craft far from 
its haven. And sometimes — oh, terrible 
thought ! — there is not the presence of the 



26 



Pilot, to guide the voyager out beyond the 
bar and away over the unknown waters. 
Uncharted depths stretch away before 
the frail craft in forbidding mockery of 
the benighted and presumptuous soul who 
dares to set out alone on lonely seas of 
night. The parting is hard enough when 
the soul sets sail with the Pilot. How 
hopeless and tearful is the sailing of one 
who puts out to sea alone and in utter 
ignorance of his course! Oh, that he 
might have with him the wonder and the 
gladness of the presence of the Pilot! 

But our singer has this Pilot. For him, 
then, the voyage will be safe, for he is 
truly turning again home, and with One 
who knows the course. 

Home! The unremembered haven of 
Eternity, whence once his tiny craft bore 
him, all unknowing, to the strand of the 
isle of Time, from which he is now to de- 
part as he sets out again for the Home 
land. Home! Haven of souls weary of 
earth and tempestuous seas! Home of 
eternal spirits whose joy is in the presence 
and the service of the King ! The home of 
God and His ministering angels and o 
earth-weary souls turned again home: 



27 



How joy-filled will be the heart of hin 
who descries, across the vast undula- 
tions of foaming wave stretches, the 
strand of the Eternal Homeland, great 
Isle of the Unending Day> filled ever with 
joy and song and love and glad service, 
and made eternally bright and beautiful 
by the presence of the Light of Eternity ! 
Happy with indescribable bliss will be 
the voyager whose eyes shall view the 
shore-line fringed with those who in rap- 
ture await his coming, and whose ears 
shall hear, above the lapping of the waves, 
the sweet music of Eternity. But even 
greater bliss will be his when he shall feel 
his heart glow in growing rapture with 
the conscious presence of the Pilot. 



28 



u 

"Twilight and evening bell, 

And after that the dark!" 

Twilight! The hour when earth's day 
slips away into night, and the tired world 
rests from the day's cares and labors. It 
is the hour of gloaming, when shadows 
deepen and silence weighs more heavily 
upon the bosom of earth. It is the hour 
of silent reverie, when the soul, still awed 
by the day's dying, feels the .descending 
pall of darkness and the call to holy and 
reverent thought. Then the myriad lights 
of heaven become visible to us, as if to 
compensate us for the passing of the sun- 
light, and, with their charm, to draw our 
thoughts away from the visible things of 
earth to the hidden things of heaven. 

And evening bell! It is the bell whicl 
marks the coming of evening. It is a 
warning of the approach of darkness. Thr 
evening bell is the harbinger of rest and 
silence and sleep that knows naught un 



29 



til the hour of waking. With Tennyson, 
the evening bell symbolizes the soul's sum- 
mons to pass throught night to the hour 
of unending morning. It marks the ap- 
proach of the end of things finite and 
earthly, after and beyond which is to be 
the eternal glory of things infinite and 
surpassingly heavenly. It heralds the 
coming of the hour when man is to quit 
earth for heaven, and relinquish his earth- 
ly dross for the pure, refined gold of 
heaven — when man's spirit passes from its 
little house of clay to a mansion heaven- 
ly and eternal. So men may hear a note of 
hope in the ringing of the evening bell, 
as it summons them to pass through night 
to the new Day beyond. 

How reluctantly the play-weary child 
lays aside his toys and goes to his bed 
at night ! He knows that the morrow may 
bring long hours for play, not in shadow 
but in light, and yet the present moments 
of the day's play are very precious to him. 
The joy of the play of the day-to-be is 
eclipsed by the prolonged pleasure of the 
twilight that is. So men, hearing the ring- 
ing of the bell that summons them to the 
passing to the blissful moments of Eter- 



30 



\ 



nity's unending day, yet draw back for a 
few more moments with their toys in the 
gathering dusk of their dying hour. And 
as children dread the coming of the night- 
time and shrink in terror from the dark- 
ened room which lies between them and 
their new day of happiness, so men are 
wont to dread the approach of the night 
of their life, and shrink in mute terror 
from the oncoming darkness which screens 
from them the beauty and the joy of their 
new Eternal Day. The unfading light of 
heaven's day is less vivid to them than 
is the growing darkness of their eventide. 
They shrink back in the dark of their own 
little room, the scene of their day's joys 
and sorrows, rather than pass out joyfully 
into the spell of God's grand evening, 
there to place their hands in His and 
journey out with Him through the gather- 
ing gloom to the glory of their heaven- 
ly mansion. 

Yet childhood, happy in the day's joys 
and untutored in fear of the darkness, 
may approach its bed with simple thank- 
fulness for the day and its joys, and with 
confident trustfulness may look forward 
to the coming happiness of a new day. 



31 






Even so men, grateful and happy because 
of life's blessings from God, and untram- 
meled by fear of the night of death, may 
with gratitude view the approach of their 
night as that which is to bring them to 
their new day, and may look forward 
with confident trustfulness to the coming 
bliss of the time when Eternity's dawn will 
lie upon their horizon. 

How happy is such a soul, for whom the 
night has no terror, because of knowledge 
that beyond lies the Day, wherein the 
Master will company with him and hold 
tryst ! What melodies of heaven play a 1 
ready within his heart! Already his soul 
rises in sublime song as it senses afresh 
the divine harmonies of Eternity and 
those wonderful melodies in which it once 
joyed. Truly for him death has no sting ! 
He recks not of death nor of the grave, 
for his hand is already within his Pilot's 
and the night has grown bright with the 
harbingers of heaven's light and beauty. 
Life's first page is turned. Beyond lie 
new chapters unread, in which the sub- 
lime story unfolds under the skillful touch 
of the Master. Upon the bursted bud are 
the dew-drops, where to-morrow the sun 



32 



will work magic growth, until the full- 
blown flower is expanded in its mature 
loveliness, to receive new glories from the 
Masters palette throughout the aeons. 

Is there sorrow in this? If there be 
sorrow in glad growth, if there be sad- 
ness in joyous attainment to perfect 
bloom, if there be grief in eternal song 
and the exultant sweep of joyous hal- 
leluiahs, then is there sorrow — much sor- 
row — in death. But if light be beautiful 
and if exultant singing be gladness and 
if the coming at last to consummate per- 
fection be helpful and holy, then is death 
-a beautiful, a joyous, a holy transforming, 
in which the brittle clay is struck off and 
the immortal stands revealed in imper- 
ishable grandeur of loveliness. 

What matters it to such a soul that 
with the clear tones of the evening bell he 
is conscious that there is 

" . . . . after that the dark"? 

Aye, what matters that? Truly it is 
the dark ; yet he knows that the dark can- 
not long hide the dawn of the undying 
Day. The dark will be brief at the most, 
and the light of dawn will seem only the 



33 



brighter. And even in the darkness this 
soul will know the watchful guidance of 
the Light of Life. 
It is not strange that he cries, 

"And may there be no sadness of farewell, 
When I embark". 

Why should there be sadness at his 
going? Sadness and grief will be lost and 
forgotten in the bliss of the other shore. 
There will be farewells here, surely. But 
the poet, brave in the fortitude of love 
and unfailing trust, and conscious that 
there shall be no sadness in his own heart, 
hopes for like fortitude and its attendant 
peace and confidence in the hearts of 
those friends of earth who will gather at 
the water's brink to wait and watch until 
his vessel has dipped below their horizon. 
His voyage will be safe. The Pilot is with 
him. Tears and sadness will only harrow 
his heart at the parting. His soul, soon 
to be rapt in the light and the eternal 
bliss of heaven, needs not now to be 
clouded by the gloom of sadness. And 
sympathizing friends who watch need not 
bewail the sailing of one who voyages witl* 
the Pilot to the Homeland, for his lot is 



34 



soon to be happier by far than is theirs. 
But they should joy in easing for him 
the difficulty of the parting with dear 
ones, and in comforting their own hearts 
with the hope that he will reach the 
Haven in safety and that they will meet 
him there a little later in the eternal 
morning which he is soon to know and en- 
joy. 

"When I embark". 

There is a note of simple faith and 
determined purpose in that quiet declara- 
tion of sailing. It is as though an ex- 
perienced mariner spoke of a new cruise 
to oft-frequented shores. There is no 
quaver of voice, no wavering of purpose, 
no lurking note of uneasiness or of gnaw- 
ing fear. He is to sail, and bravely. 

Indeed, it is quite likely that he has put 
out to those unknown shores often, in im- 
agined sailings in his own thought, when 
his spirit has set free its pinions in hopeful 
anticipation. Although he knows not 
where lie those shores from which he has 
been released for a time for his earthly 
journey and which he has sought often 
in his imagination since, yet his heart has 



no fear of missing the Haven, nor of con- 
flict with tempests, nor of being lost in 
uncertain darkness. He will put out to sea 
without fear or doubt, but with unfalter- 
ing trust in his Pilot and with a simple 
prayer to the great Ruler of seas and ha- 
vens. 



<; For, though from out our bourne of time and place 

The flood may bear me far, 
I hope to see my Pilot face to face 

When I have cross'd the bar." 



Our bourne of time and place! How 
beautifully expressive is that name for 
his place of earthly pilgrimage, and ours ! 
Our bourne, our haven, our country, our 
harbor, a little, quiet resting-place beside 
the great Sea that stretches out toward 
Eternity! Our harbor of time, whereas 
the Homeland to which we set sail, knows 
an endless eternity. Our harbor of place 
— of place finite, sorrow- thronged, col- 
ored with the changing passions of mor- 
tal lives in joy or weeping. Our harbor of 
place — a narrow haven, on either side of 
which the billows beat unceasingly. With- 
in its narrow bounds are heard the vary- 
ing sounds of human life, and within its 



36 



carders are the crimes, the indifference 
and the altruism which mortal men ex- 
press in their daily lives. 

"The flood may bear me far". 

The flood — the unceasing flow of that 
expanse which separates us from 
Et:rnity. It is not a tranquil river nor 
100th, charted sea, but a vast flood 
which flows and has flowed from the very 
morning of creation, and which will con- 
tinue to sweep on in unbroken strength 
and grandeur until the very farthest mo- 
ment of Eternity. 

The soul knows not how far may be his 
sailing upon that flood. We know not 
how far or how near may be the Eternity 
to which, sooner or later, we must all go. 
Nearer than we imagine may be the 
shore-line of the Eternal Homeland. We 
must believe that* it is the matter of 
nee with which Tennyson is con- 
cerned in whatever of uncertainty he may 
show here, when he says 

"The flood may bear me far". 

It is not that he fears that the unre- 



37 



strained flood may bear his little bark 
amiss while his Pilot guides, or that the 
flood, though tempest-lashed, may bear 
him so far that his Pilot cannot take him 
at last safely over the harbor bar and into 
the quiet Haven of the Homeland. To 
have such fears would be to doubt hi 
Pilot. But Tennyson does not doubt Him. 

'The flood may bear me far". * 

It may seem that there is a degree of 
uncertainty here in the mind of the 
poet. But he knows that beyond the cloud 
rims is the unfailing radiance of the sun, 
and that after the dark of eventide and 
the pall of midnight come the majestV 
glow of the dawn and the full glory of 
bright noonday, if it be God's will ti 
another day should dawn. Our poet 
reaches out in faith which rises trium- 
phant over all dominion of night and evil, 
and, in mighty belief, lays hold upon the 
God of day and goodness eternal. 

"I hope to see my Pilot face to face 
When I have crossed the bar." 

I hope! Aye, that is as the dawn's first 
gleaming. It is light which darts through 



38 



the darkness and tints the horizon with 
the first glad glow of coming realization. 
I hope! The obscuring cloud is about tc 
be riven and dissolved by the full glare 
of the sun behind it, and light — full, in- 
tense, all-pervading — is to burst through 
that which was once the gloom of clouc 1 . 
It is as though a blind man, groping for the 
hem of the Master's garment, feels the 
mists melt from before his eyes at the 
music of the words of the One who spoke 
as none other has ever spoken. It is as 
though a mariner, straining his eyes at 
the lookout's post on the mast, sees the 
horizon flame into light at the kindling 
of the lamp in the tower above the crags. 

"I hope to see my Pilot face to face". 

There is the possessive pronoun, first 
person, singular. My! For he, like all 
other souls who sail toward Eternity, may 
claim as his the Pilot — the good Guide of 
needy souls who sail the great main. And 
with what pride and joy may he claim 
Him as his ! For once He sailed this same 
expanse of sea, in order that other men 
might sail the better and might come at 
last, through His piloting, into the glad 



39 



Haven of Souls. And in the sailing He 
gave His life. Only in invisible, spirit 
form does He now direct the course of 

the voyager to the Beautiful Haven. 

"I hope to see my Pilot face to face". 

What joy it will be to see the One who 
has steered the ship safely into its haven . 
To see Him! Yes, and to thank Him an 
to offer eternal allegiance to Him in ser- 
vice upon the shores of the Better Land; 
to know Him and love Him; to be wit] 
Him ; to walk and talk and dine with Him ; 
to commune with Him hourly; to sit and 
listen under the spell of the sacred voice 
which shamed demons into flight and 
made the lame to leap in joy and caused 
the blind and the sick to resume their 
ways with sight and health, and made 
even the dead to come forth from the 
silence of the tomb! 

For the meeting and the eternal com- 
munion with Him will be 

" . . . face to face". 

It will not be at that time in the silence 
of printed words on pages which perish 



40 



with turning, nor in the memory of voices 
whose music may hush within the cham- 
bers of our consciousness, nor yet in the 
lineaments of features limned for a time 
within the gallery of the mind but doomed 
to fade into indistinctness. Rather, v 
will be unending heart communion — face 
to face, hour by hour, day by day, cen- 
turies upon centuries — with Him whom 
neither death nor mortal life might hold, 
because His home is in the ageless morn- 
ing of Eternity. 

Face to face with Him who is the sub- 
lime consumation of all love, all duty and 
service, all perfection! Face to face wit)' 
Him who is the very Light of Heaven and 
the consummate personification of its 
love! To learn forever and always of 
Him ! To be instructed in the attaining 
to perfection such as that to w r hich He at- 
tained, and in the doing of all duty and 
in the performing of all noble service, 
even as He performed duty and service! 
Shall not all these things be in our con- 
ception of the glad Homeland? 

Tennyson does not go beyond this ir 
his delineation of the delights of that 
Shore to which he knows that his bark 



41 



will bear him. Perhaps that one though" 
that one realization of Eternity-long 
presence with the Christ of Galilee, was 
ample to still all anxiety and unrest ano 
even any regret which Tennyson may 
have felt at thought of the sailing. It 
may be that this was the naming of a joy 
which was the anticipation and the epit- 
ome of other joys which the poet might 
have hesitated to name. We may not 
know as to that. But it is certain that 
this one great hope, this one great eternal 
joy tasted and made his in anticipation, 
was sufficient to quench all risings of 
doubt and dark uncertainty within his 
mind, and to fill him and thrill him anew 
with a great, vital certainty of hope al- 
ready realized, as he calmly and hope- 
fully faced the time of his sailing. It may 
even be that his great heart longed, even 
in that moment of solemn thought of his 
going, to set out across the unknown 
waters to the Land where such wonderful 
happiness was to be his forever. 

"When I have cross'd the bar." 

It is only when he shall have crossed the 

bar that Tennyson expects the true real- 



42 



ization of this great happiness of com- 
muning face to face with his Pilot. It 
might seem that he feels that he may not 
see his Pilot, who is also your Pilot and my 
Pilot, until he has crossed the bar. It 
may be that in the night of sailing there 
will not be opportunity for seeing the 
benign face of the One who is to guide 
his bark out to sea and then at last into 
the Beautiful Haven of Souls. Or it may 
be that the Pilot will choose to reveal the 
beauty of His face only in the light of 
Eternity. Be that as it may, the soul may 
see his Pilot face to face when he has 

" . . . . cross'd the bar." 

The bar — the outlying danger-point for 
ships that sail toward the Haven. It is 
the place where the rocks and the sunken 
reefs endanger prow and keel. Only the 
Pilot knows where it can be crossed safe- 
ly. He knows where the shallows lie and 
where the trustworthy channels cu ; : 
through the treacherous forms, and where 
the deep currents sweep unhindered 
through and on to safety. 

Each ship, each soul, must cross the bar. 
It stretches out before the unending shore- 



line of Eternity. The soul who en- 
deavors to steer his own course through 
the reefs and the shallows and among the 
hidden rocks of the bar cannot hope to 
reach the shores of the Homeland in safe- 
ty. The Pilot must be aboard and in com- 
mand. His hand must direct the wheel and 
His voice must command the setting of 
the sails. Happy beyond expression is the 
soul whose sailing lies in His hands. That 
soul may with unruffled calm of spirit look 
forward gladly to the moment of his em- 
barking and to the joy of the hour when 
his feet shall touch the golden sands c 
the Other Shore, where he shall see, face 
to face, and in His ineffable beauty, un 
marred by the tempest's gale or the fury 
of storm-lashed seas, the great Pilot of 
Eternity's unending ocean. 

Great Pilot of life's sea, watch thou 
against the hour of my sailing. May it be 
attended with simple, trustful joy, rather 
than with grief which would shadow my 
trust in thee. Be thou near when the fare- 
wells are said. And when the tide goes 
out and the wind gathers in force within' 
the swelling sails, be thy hand upon the 



44 



wheel, to guide my bark safely over the 
nearer bar and out into the flood 01 
waters. May the lashings of the tempest 
be quieted by a word from thee, even as 
the prattling of an erring child is shamed 
into silence by the gentle pleading of ? 
mother's voice. May the night be calm 
yet vibrant with the wonder of thy spirit 
presence. And when I near the Homeland 
guide thou me across the bar and safely 
into the joyous Haven of Eternity. Then 
shall I in rapture behold the transcendent 
beauty of thy face, and with thee, and 
with all the blessed host of those in the 
Homeland, shall I enjoy endless com- 
munion, 

''When I have cross'd the bar." 



45 



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JRdberf (Caspar ^Itnttter 



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